


Oneirataxia

by lesbianwaifu



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Other, Post-V3, Suicide mention, Underage Drinking, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 18:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianwaifu/pseuds/lesbianwaifu
Summary: From Greek, Oneirataxia (n.): inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.Short angsty drabble in which Tsumugi tortures herself with some thoughts.





	Oneirataxia

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to be clear, I never left the danganronpa hellhole. I don't have patience to write long stuff anymore other than roleplay.

Scrolling through social media is only a good idea if you’re mentally in a good place, but it was also part of Tsumugi’s job. As the Ultimate Cosplayer, her social media was more important to her as a character than most of the other people in the Danganronpa cast and it was heavily frowned upon that she ever went a day without updating her Instagram -- it doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of an existential crisis, nobody wants to know if you’re in tears, just keep it updated. It’s not that hard.

But it could be, sometimes. It could be one of the hardest things to post a picture of yourself smiling when you’ve been in bed all day, two empty vodka bottles on the floor and your stomach rejecting the flood of alcohol. Her thumbs hovered over her phone screen while she uselessly tried to think of a creative caption, but her intoxicated brain didn’t cooperate and she ended up uploading it with only a heart emoji.

It was done, they couldn’t complain about that.

And all Team Danganronpa did was complain when she couldn’t. Tsumugi tried to remind herself everyday that the rest of the cast had it harder than her: screwed up memories like someone just cut a hole in your head and scrambled the insides, and she was the lucky one. Her memories were the least affected by the new implanted personality and her obsession with the game remained as vivid as it had always been pre-game. TDR was highly demanding of mastermind characters, both during and after the killing game, and even if these demands affected her psychologically, it didn’t compare to what the other students suffered.

But nights like these made her wonder whether it had been worth it at all. Being the mastermind came with a price and you only knew about it once you played the role.

The marketing for Danganronpa was pretty good. Once a game was over, all the participants remained friends, went to hang out together, have fun, post pictures, talk about each other in interviews, date each other, live happily ever after -- a well-crafted artificially sweetened reality and an extremely well-told lie. A lie which pre-game Tsumugi believed in.

Tsumugi clicked the messages icon on the top right of the app. As she scrolled down, there were messages from months ago that were carefully ignored: messages from her to the other participants of the game. Before all of this begun, if you told her that being the mastermind meant being isolated and despised by the entire cast, she wouldn’t have believed. Nobody told her that after they woke up, Kaede wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye, Rantaro would avoid her friendly conversation attempts and the others would only glare at her with a cold stare of disdain.

As if it was all her fault. As if they didn’t sign a contract that permitted all of it to happen. As if they were real people rather than copyrighted material. As if they didn’t want it from the start. And that was the difference between Tsumugi and the others. She remained well aware that she was in it out of sheer free will while they… they just liked to pretend they were victims. 

They constantly criticized her for being compliant with the abuse, but it was an abusive relationship, after all. As long as she didn't want to see how broken that made her, she wouldn't. Team Danganronpa could tell her to commit suicide and she would -- and sometimes she considered she didn’t even need orders to want to do that. It was statistically common for Danganronpa characters to kill themselves post-game, she would only become a number and, plain as she was, that was okay.

Just like with the game, Tsumugi was well aware of the abuses of TDR over her, but she was passive. Complaining never changed anything, discussing and pleading for understanding never did either. What kind of understanding can you expect from a company that makes kids kill each other and calls it entertainment? 

Not to speak of their fucked up pasts. Homes they couldn’t return to, sisters that didn’t exist, grandeur life perspectives that were plain unachievable. The cast often wondered whether their interests and personalities were their own or just a forged identity -- and as much as Tsumugi faintly recalled enjoying cosplay before the brainwashing, she couldn’t rely on her memories.

She couldn’t know what was implanted and what was factual. Working as a barman, sewing until she passed out of exhaustion, selling her goods and often her body to keep up a hobby she was made to enjoy -- the memories were fake, but the trauma was real.

And it would have been worth it if the post-killing game life was as glamorous as they made it seem. But, again, there she was, lying in bed and stalking her supposed friends on social media while she tried not to puke her guts out.

And she couldn’t complain. Because she wanted this.

The glamorous life of a fictional character.


End file.
